Conformity
From My Heart
October 2010
Conformity
When I was about seven years old there was a very good basketball athlete at my older sister’s school whom I admired greatly. What I remember most about him today is that my hero had a pigeon-toed way of walking.
You guessed it: As our family walked to the school for a basketball game, I remember forcing my tennis-shoed toes to point inward like his! My highest form of hero worship was conformity.
Now shift your attention to Romans 8:28-29, a timeless perspective of a true believer’s life on earth:
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Through Paul, God tells us here that He works in all life’s events for our long-range good and His long-range purposes. What purposes? The first is for each of us to become Christlike. That’s tough for clay pots like us, but the truth is that’s what God created and designed us to be. It is for our long-range good to be Christlike (character). In fact, our highest form of worship is conformity.
God’s second purpose emerges in the last phrase of verse 29: Our Christlikeness exalts God’s Son, honoring Him as the preeminent One, the rightful Heir. It is God the Father’s purpose that God the Son be properly recognized and glorified.
In recent years God has led Mission to Children to envision and embrace this mission as the heartbeat of our ministry to adults who influence children, even those at-risk. For example, in June, my wife Jan and I team-taught a group of Jordanian and Egyptian seminarians to become increasingly Christlike in their families and in their leadership.
One of the most moving moments in Jordan happened at a student’s home one afternoon. Despite her poverty, she invited us for a mid-day feast. As we ate, we learned that her husband—a former pastor—had abandoned God, ministry, his wife, and their teenage twins. Imagine their anger, grief, and bitterness. Then we talked about Christlike forgiveness and prayed for this man who has wounded his family so badly. God blessed that moment.
In August Jan and I spent several days in Lebanon with Christian Arab students recently graduated from various universities. What will their stories be? Will you please pray for Christ’s character to be formed in them?
